BJP & Congress

The two national political parties are now in deep embarrassment over the activities of their party men in the two states in the South, their political strongholds. They are in this unenviable situation for very different reasons. 

The BJP is in a bind in Karnataka: the man they had championed to lead the state had turned out to be tainted over the same reason that they had been bashing the Congress with: corruption. Now, to add insult to injury, the same man is threatening to overthrow a legitimate government with a handful of MLAs in his favor.

The Congress in Andhra Pradesh is saddled with the Telangana agitation (the T'angle of Andhra politics) which has succeeded in at least driving a wedge within the party's rank and file. The T Congress MLAs refusing to kowtow to the party line are taking up the cudgels with fire and brimstone. This has led the BJP, which has little say in the state politics, to bash the Congress no less than the myriad JAC groups clamoring for a division of the state. From within the Congress another section arose to stem the tide of division, a motley group of MLAs with high stakes (read heavy investment) in Hyderabad, clamoring to retain a united state. And then there are those who is watching from the fence, unable to make up their minds, fueling both sides to make the spectacle worth the watch. 

There is also a tenuous but visible thread connecting these two parties in the two states: the man who roused the masses on a sympathy wave and is spearheading a backlash for both. 

It is interesting to see the outcome in the coming Elections 2014. Are the people tired of the lies, the endless squabbling, the limitless greed and all this with no let up in rising prices in sight?

Science & The Paranormal

The paranormal has always fascinated us. Lacking scientific evidence
and the scientific will to pursue it methodically, the subject has
been relegated to intuition, belief and personal experience that
cannot be reproduced or validated. Surrounding it is fear by some and
contempt by others. It is couched in terminology that grew out of
esoteric rites. It is entrenched in belief, the antithesis of science.
As we become more dependent on science and its myriad inventions, it
is imperative that we bring this subject into its purview. We have
neglected this experience as much as the believers have vehemently
ostracized science from their experience.

Samuel Johnson once wrote that we condemn and vilify what we don't
comprehend. This was the position assumed by science when belief
denounced it. And yet, the very same science still abhors to give
consideration to matters arising out of belief. It is easy for science
to study nature and deduce laws, but to study belief is more arduous
and challenging as it is shrouded in mysterious rites. Even the
language of a people is steeped in its belief systems. Nature is one,
but belief systems are many; yet another obstacle to science. An
obdurate refusal in taking up the study of the paranormal is in itself
a negation of the science's first principle: curiosity followed by a
systematic study.

The paranormal is obviously experiential and therefore subjective.
Objectivity is the cornerstone of science. Its laws derive from
repeatable experiments. Two people see the same thing at the same time
and undergo the same sensory experience. It can be repeated on any
part of the planet with the same result and can be predicted to be the
same on other planets as well after making due corrections to the
conditions there. The paranormal experience, however, is neither
repeatable nor can it be quantifiable. It cannot be recorded or
studied in a laboratory. It cannot be predicted to occur in time or
space. It is for this reason has been termed paranormal, above and
beyond the normal plane of experience.

Science is not just a study of matter. It is a study of life as well.
The science of the mind has made great progress in unravelling its
activities. Thought is now understood to be a material process, as a
manifestation of matter. Belief must stem from thought bred no doubt
by experience. Science can no long take the Brahminic position of
exclusivity. It must study thought in all its ramifications. An
all-inclusive science cannot take up sides with regard to any issue.
Taking sides automatically sets the parties in a conflicting position.
Exclusivity is an invitation to conflict, which as everyone knows
inevitably breeds dogmatism.

Perhaps science is not ready yet to tackle the insidious and sometimes
invidious matter of belief. Scientific principles are perhaps too
rigid in allowing non-material experiences for study. Perhaps the
scientific will is unaccommodating, being unsure of treading into
areas not likely to yield tangible results or not amenable to lay down
incontrovertible laws. The study of Truth, not in a rigid logical
sense, but in a fluidic intuitive sense, without foregoing reason and
rationality, seems to be beyond the reach of science as it is
practiced. The arrows with which theology attacks science are the same
arrows that science hurls at theology.

The unexamined life is not worth living, said Socrates, whose
unflagging and meticulous analysis into every aspect of life inspired
generations of scientists, philosophers and artists. The paranormal is
the unexamined part of our lives and we need to inquire into it
scientifically, that is rationally and sanely; though, it may not be
understood in terms of measurement and refuse to be bound into a
theoretical framework. But laws it must follow, even the paranormal,
laws that science cannot or would not formulate. Ignoring the
paranormal in its search for truth, science cannot hope to attain it,
for it is excluding something unexamined.

The surreal is not just an artistic device or a way of explaining
things away. Nor is it an invocation of the divine or the demonic to
shun rationality. It is not a mind spinning a web of fantasy in order
to overpower the gullible. It is an expression of life that is little
understood, steeped as it is in mythical lore and esoteric practices.
It must be studied in the light of day, in the laboratory of science,
in the sane and rational thinking, in the same way a man of love
studies and expresses compassion, kindness, generosity, humility and
other enduring qualities of the human beings. The surreal is not just
an amalgam of fact and fiction, but a poorly understood part of the
unexamined life.

My Debut Novel

My novella Magnificent Loss is going to see the light of day through ebook publishing startup Indirom. 

Indirom has launched their website (www.indirom.com) recently and will release the ebooks for sale from the middle of February this year. 

The e-publishing giants like Amazon provide a platform for self-publishing authors to write and publish their works from the desktop, without the traditional publishing process of drafting, editing, revising and finally turning out the manuscript for publication. All the hard work, the specialist's work, including editing, art for the cover page, excerpts from their work and blurb etc., everything that goes from the draft to the publication stage is handled by the author. There is no one to guide or prejudge the merit of the work before it is published. Also, the marketing of the ebook is entirely left to the author. This is called indie publishing and seems to have made much headway lately. 

Indirom, on the other hand, took a different approach. They preserved the traditional publishing process where in they scrutinize the sample chapters submitted and if they found merit in it, they provide the editorial support where it is required, guide the first-time author through the publishing process from the first stage to the last, do the necessary handholding during editing by experienced editors, and finally the manuscript comes up ready for the publication. The cover page is also designed by specialists and the authors input is also solicited, though the final say is left to the artist. The ebook is also marketed by the publisher through the social channels of communication like blogs, Facebook and Twitter. The cost incurred in all this process is borne by Indirom and the author reserves full copyright of the work and is compensated according to the traditional publishing terms.

For me, it was a pleasure working with the Indirom team. They were patient, critical and enthusiastic. They even discussed the story in detail, went over the manuscript several times and allowed me the space and time to get the story right and set it in a tight narrative. On their suggestion, I trimmed here and expanded there until I was fully satisfied with the outcome. 

Indirom's tagline speaks well for their objective: romance for the South Asian soul. They intend to focus on works coming out of these regions, even though the authors may belong to any part of the world. Romance is a genre that is by most counts the greatest seller in the ebook market (76%) and Indirom hopes to create a niche in this area. They have categories within this genre and color codes to identify them. The South Asian region is huge geographically speaking and its diaspora is spread in all corners of the globe. It is to the peoples of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh that Indirom hopes to reach out to through their publishing mill. 

The fiction is aimed primarily at the fastpaced commuter rushing through the hurly-burly life of our time, who prefers novellas to voluminous 400-page wordathons, who would willingly snitch a couple of pleasurable hours from their valuable time rather than invest days in plodding through an epic, who would get a glimpse into a fantasy world and collect pithy maxims, rather than worm through a mountain pile of words to sift the dross from gold. It is with this objective in mind that Indirom began its publishing journey in the digital world and it has been a pleasure for me from the word go. 

Self-correcting mechanism

In a PDF booklet on mudras (the healing powers inherent in particular postures of the hand, a part of yoga), the author writes that whenever the same kind of trees start occupying the greater part of the forest, a fire starts to engulf and destroy the trees in order to provide a level field for all kinds of trees to grow. Amazing...a self-correcting mechanism in nature, much like the fish that immolate themselves in a mass suicide whenever the prey in the environment dwindles (i read this in the book The Web of Life). Since we are part of nature, the self-correcting mechanism must exist in us also. Like the bird with a broken wing that heals itself by holding the wing to its body until it attaches itself again. Marvelous. This is the kind of intelligence I was thinking about: that intelligence is spread throughout the universe. Every blade of grass and every grain of sand is endowed with it. We exhibit it rarely in art and function and that is when the human glory peaks. In physiology, the yogic exercises are designed to enhance this capacity of the body to heal itself. Intelligence in the body seems to operate best when the mind stops making undue demands of it. For thought in the mind has concomitant effect on the body. 

Truth and revelation

A quote by someone on Facebook of Solzhenitsyn on a truth about life  

drew a comment that it is all there in Bhagwat Gita. Often we hear such comments as much as to say that why give importance to someone's truth when it is already there in the scripture? But the point is: someone has found the truth and you want to run it down by holding up the scripture, which is to deny authentic discovery with something that is packaged and handed down. We are better off saying that our scriptures are the greatest rather than discovering truth in our own life. Truth I think needs to be discovered for ourself and not simply borrowed or purchased from books, however holy. Such truth has far more significance to the discoverer than what is stated in the holy book and repeated endlessly as a matter of routine. What is repeated has no significance to the repeater however true it maybe for the one who revealed it. The question of revelation is to be understood, I think, and not just glossed over by futile repetitions. The repeaters propagate truth, they don't live it. The scripture gives them the authority they lack. Authority can neither be borrowed nor transferred; one has to be an author of one's revelation. 

Thoughts on the 'hero'

Reading Sherwood Anderson's Marching Men is like my mind is now opening to things I didn't know how to express, things I didn't know how to look and think and talk about, but only felt vaguely, like the nebulous star clouds seen by the Hubble telescope. I also felt like I should write about a hero of our time, like yesterday's post on the blogger about the questions I had about the hero's profile, characteristics etc. The barber character talking about women in chapter 3 book II stirred me deeply, resonated with my own views and made me think of writing a story around that idea.  This is the path not taken by the 'hero', one who eschews and if necessary walks away from, in order to maintain his pristine internal order, purity and sanity and therefore sanctity. The hero must emerge from burning away of those elements that hold him back, that submerge him in the ordinary rut of living, instead he nurtures elements that propel him towards a destiny away from the common lot, that make him think and act in ways contrary to popular opinion, contrary to established notions of living. He vicariously or otherwise lives through each force, sees his way through the eyes of the others, and sees the path it leads to and therefore avoids it. He must go through the three stages of life: habit, instinct and intelligence - that is, of the machine, the animal and then finally the human. The hero is born of intelligence, when he overcomes his mechanical habits, his brute nature and finally enters the portals of intelligence that is the natural state of the human being, though it is considered unnatural now, even divine in some respects. 

The first generation of men left their idyllic villages and migrated to cities in search of new opportunities, in search of greater knowledge, better housing, modern living, to partake of the advancement in science and education, in the happenings around the world and in the changing face of the country and its leadership. These men shaped the cities according to their aspirations, according to their temperament and according to their capacity in dealing with the social and political currents prevalent in the cities at the time of their migration. Some of them became news makers, some news reporters, and some totally lost in the ever changing social milieu, in the rut of family life, in the race to move up in the hierarchy, in the many distractions that are ever present in a society in perpetual transition that marks a growing city. Out of this morass must come the jewel, the hero, who rising above the ordinary flow sees the inevitable destiny and steps out of it. 

Hero

A life without a purpose, anger without a justifiable cause, hurt without anything precious to defend, weakness that masquerades as moral uprightness, no heroic struggle, a wisdom that is borrowed and repeated a thousand times, stolen yet aired with pomposity and self-righteousness, morals that have long become dull platitudes, lifeless and ineffectual, a culture that is paraded and took pride upon lost its glory in myths and vacuous and inane turpitude. Who is the hero among us?  Where is valor and supreme integrity that is not fragmented by the myriad forces that rend the soul into a million pieces? A life of safety is sought by most men, a secure life that is not threatened by the change, by the increasing violence, by the swelling greed, by the wails of the weak and the tortures of the rich and the powerful. Where is the action in life that is not a knee-jerk reaction to circumstances, not a response of the frightened being, not an outcome of the cunning mind or the pompous generosity of the self serving individuals? Where is the travail of man rising above the inanities of living, above the humdrum life of the common, soaring in the realm of the sublime, defeating the inner forces that threaten to tear at the very soul? Where is that man who is not merely led by chance, by circumstance, by forces within and without, by habits, by thoughts and ideas of others, but runs under his own steam, makes his own principles, follows his heart and directs his mind, governs his urges and blazes a trail for the former to follow? Is there such a man amongst us? A man who is not afraid to be ordinary and yet does extraordinary things with great simplicity and with scorching passion?